St. Hilarion was the founder and organizer of monastic life in Palestine and the spiritual father of many monks. He was born to the south of Gaza in Palestine and studied in Alexandria; in Egypt he came to know St. Antony, desired to share his solitary life with him and then introduced this form of life to his own country where it spread rapidly. Driven from Palestine by the persecution of Julian the Apostate, he died in Cyprus in 371.

[Feria – our saint is in today’s martyrology but not on the universal calendar]